Godowsky - The Gardens of Buitenzorg (Godowsky, Bolet, Hmelnitsky)

"Buitenzorg, meaning “Sans Souci” and pronounced Boy-ten-sorg, forty miles from Batavia, is the country capital of Java, where the Governor-general of the Dutch East Indies has his residence. His spacious palace is situated in a large park which forms part of the most famous Botanical Gardens in the world.

The finest collection of tropical trees, plants and flowers is to be found in the gardens of this distant corner of our Earth. The profusion, richness, magnificence and beauty of this strange horticultural world are unparalleled.

The fragrant frangipanis, the white tuberoses(the Malay call them “The Charmers of the Night”) and a bewildering number of other most delicately scented flowers intoxicate the senses.

The heavily perfumed air awakens an inexpressibly deep and painful yearning for unknown worlds, for inaccessible ideals, for past happenings irrevocably gone—these memories which the ocean of time gradually submerges and finally buries in oblivion......

Why do certain scents produce unutterable regrets, insatiable longings, indefinable desires?"

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Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938) 0:00
rec. 1935

Jorge Bolet (1914-1990) 3:20
rec. 1983

Igor Hmelnitsky (1920-1987) 8:04
rec. 1970